It is called rolling targets, as my friend said. Small, medium or large businesses need business plans before they can do anything. The first thing asked is whether there is a business plan and whether the elements of their old, new or renewed venture have been thought through. Organizations such as a boy scout club or the Red Cross and others need business plans. They need plans. They need goals and a strategy to meet those goals.
What is our plan as a country? We do not have one. We are a plan-free zone. We do not have plans in Canada. If we asked Canadians from coast to coast what they think the federal government's plan for the future of Canada was, we would get the wildest mishmash of commentary imaginable because we do not have a plan. Surely therein lies a portion of our success, a reason for our success, if we could bring the major stakeholders of our country together and develop a plan.
With all due respect to the Minister of Finance, who is setting health care policy? Is it the health care business? Is it the health care sector? No. It is the Minister of Finance seeking advice from his financial advisers who are basically deciding some of the fundamental health care policies of the country. We are waiting for the budget to see what the health care policy of Canada will be. This is wrong.
The same is true of education. Crucial to the knowledge based economy of the 21st century is having a decent educational training system from coast to coast to coast. Who is deciding basically on the new thrust or if there is to be a new thrust in education? It is the Minister of Finance and his political and financial advisers.
With all due respect, he knows a lot of stuff but I do not think he knows that much about health care or education. Therein lies the reason we need to plan. By planning I do not mean the Minister of Finance planning everything for us. The appropriate people should be brought together to come up with a plan that people can accept and move forward with.
Let us look at the successful economies around the world today, those economies with growth rates of 7%, 8% or 9%. I guarantee the one commonality in all those economies is that they have a plan. They have come together in one form or another and have a plan in terms of how they will grow their economy to create employment.
Simply growing the economy does not necessarily help people. It might help shareholders but it does not necessarily help people. We have to grow the economy to help people.
From our point of view health care should be a priority. We want to see at least $2.5 billion put back into health transfers. Then we need a substantial down payment on repairing the damage done to social programs. I think all Canadians would agree with that. That is certainly what we heard during the finance committee tour.
The unemployment premiums must be spent on improving the employment insurance program, to say nothing of the aid package for the agricultural sector and the pay equity obligations that we must keep.
In terms of tax relief we are suggesting a 1% reduction in the GST as a way to provide tax relief for every citizen. Even children will benefit from a GST reduction. When kids go to buy their CDs or whatever they will benefit.
In closing, debt reduction is something we have to consider. We must not be overly aggressive at this point, but obviously it is something we have to pay attention to as well as a number of things on which we will comment later in the process.